Renaming Jordan Middle School was a good idea. Not only was Jordan a eugenicist, he also once helped to cover up a murder of a colleague. Yeah, he was a peach.
I did have one tiny issue with the school being named after her. There are three middle schools in Burbank, and they we’re all originally named after naturalists; the other two are John Muir and Luther Burbank. It would have been cool if they could have found another naturalist for the new name. But as I said this is a tiny issue, roughly on the level of “you gave me this awesome mansion but this one closet still has some stuff hanging in it.”
Okay, I might be able to do this crazy 350 miles a week thing if I keep my rides slow and flat. I did a bit over 50 today, and it wasn’t horrible. I could have gone farther, but I have a really long ride coming up and I didn’t want to fry myself. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m going to try!
Total mileage so far: 3,596.82 miles. Only 1,403.18 to go! Easy peasy.
There’s talk of adding bike and bus lanes to Colorado in Eagle Rock. I hope it happens. Here’s one set of plans.
I rode a bunch this month, but hardly shot anything, so you get footage from about one tenth of the last month’s rides and a bonus talking head thing at the end.
I learned most of what I know about Richie Valens the same way everyone else my age did: by watching La Bamba. Years later when I saw an actual picture of the guy I thought “That can’t be right- that guy doesn’t look anything like Lou Diamond Phillips.”
Donna’s not any closer in appearance, but at least they managed to hire an actress born in the San Fernando Valley.
In addition to being a film location, apparently The Pink Motel has hosted multiple skateboarding events. I’m not surprised that it’s used so much as a film/tv/event location, because there is nothing anywhere near the place that would make you want to stay there.
The place looked a lot greeners when I took this picture 13 years ago.
When I worked at Germain the mascot was a Viking with a sword. After I left they decided a cute little guy stabbing things was not the best idea for an elementary school mascot. They are now the Mustangs. They also changed from an elementary school to an “Academy for Academic Achievement.”
There are many versions of The Oregon Trail, but the iconic one (and the one my students played) was a black and white (well, black and green) version of this version. It was supposed to teach you about the difficulty of a wagon trip across the United States, but most kids would just buy a bunch of bullets and shoot stuff for the whole class.
The Apple IIc Plus was an impressive computer for its time. It had an internal 3.5″ drive when most computers still ran off 5.25″ floppies. It plugged in to any TV if you had an adapter (or a TV with RCA jacks) and a carrying handle, so it was very portable. PCs at the time were usually giant boxes with dedicated monitors.
Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee is fighting to survive. Their Facebook page says that most of the business is “in limbo,” but you can still get old movie stills and photos through mail order.
I wonder if Arturo still owns my old apartment building.
Iliad Bookshop is a great place to nose around for odd books. I don’t know how it works in COVID times, but pre-pandemic you could grab a stack of books, sit in a comfy chair, and poke through them to find something you wanted to read. Support your local bookstore!
I have no idea what the model of that classic car is, but it is a glory to behold. Pictures do not do it justice.
Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas BBQ has been in the same spot in Panorama City since they opened in 1969. They’d probably be huge if they were in a more accessible part of the Valley, but they can’t (easily) move because they wouldn’t be able to get a permit elsewhere for a barbeque pit.
Dr. Hogly Wogly was an actual person. “Doc” Johnny Greene was a pharmacist from Tyler who worked for Piggly Wiggly, a Southern supermarket chain. He was a big guy, so they called him Hogly Wogly.
Seriously, you want to get the brisket.
Valley Relics
There are actually TWO museums dedicated to the San Fernando Valley. Valley Relics was founded in 2013 by Tommy Gelinas, and it’s his personal attempt to collect as much of the pop culture of the San Fernando Valley possible. It’s a little loose about what constitutes “The Valley.” It’s more like “mostly from the Valley, but if there’s somewhere close that Valley kids used to visit we’ll take stuff from there, too.” When a business with a distinct sign closes, they try to swoop in and grab it before it disappears. I hope they got the sign from Four ‘N 20, the place where I used to get banana fudge pie. I miss you, banana fudge pie.
The other museum has the much more formal title of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley. It was founded in 2005 at Los Angeles Valley College. With the more formal title comes more formal exhibits. Lots of photographs and carefully researched articles, very few physical bits of pop culture from the past. It’s also been around about eight years longer.
Legends of the Fall
I fell on my bike. It was dumb. I wasn’t going fast. I was on a bit of dirt, but it was hard packed. I should have been fine, but instead decided to tear up my knee and forearm, and apparently thrash my back as well. That’s okay- it’s not like I’m planning to ride 230 miles a week or something.
The thing I was most worried about when I signed up for the TogetheRide was the fundraising. I hate fundraising. Even when I know it’s for a good cause, I have a very hard time asking people for money. I set my goal at their suggested low end – $3000 – and started riding. When I passed that I didn’t officially change my goal, but I secretly hoped I’d get to $5000.
Yesterday it happened. I’ve now raised five thousand dollars and ninety-five cents. Some of that is me, some of that is matching donations (which is why I threw in money- those had limits on time and available funds), but most of that is you. Thanks for being awesome.
One more thing: I pointed out the “polka-dot neck thing” like it was somehow directly related to TogetheRide. It’s not. It just happened to match the jersey, so I decided that Fate wanted me to wear it.
I can’t believe I forgot to stop at the LaRusso’s apartment. It’s probably the most recognizable location from the movie.
Almost four decades later and it looks almost the same. Probably got a bit of fixing up thanks to the Cobra Kai series.
I almost stopped at Mr. Miyagi’s house, but they didn’t shoot the part you see from the street. It just looks like a house surrounded by a wood fence that could use a little “paint fence up down.”
Another thing to notice about Ali’s house: listen to the ambient noise. Down in The Valley everywhere is surrounded by cars. Up in the hills it’s quiet. So quiet that I’m practically using my “library voice.”
If you’re wondering why I didn’t include any Cobra Kai locations, it’s because they shoot most of the show in Georgia. That’s also why I didn’t go to the Golf ‘n’ Stuff, which is not even close to the San Fernando Valley. My guess: the script originally had them go to Castle Park in Sherman Oaks, but it was easier/cheaper to film in Downey. And a trip to Leo Carrillo Beach would have added more than sixty miles and 3000 feet of climb to my ride.
I should do more “SFV as a film location” videos. I could do a bunch just on the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson.
First of all: A big thank you to Jamie, who not only donated but used the tool on the donation page to get matching funds from her employer. Yay Jamie! Also: check out Bionic Disco!
A Warning
This is mostly about movie theaters in the eighties, so get ready for some Grandpa Simpson storytelling. Of course, I had an onion tied to my belt, as was the style at the time…
A thing that I’m glad didn’t happen at the UA
Katherine and I were supposed to go on our first date there. It was the day after the end of 11th grade, and I asked her to a movie (after she offered to drive me home so I could ask her out, even though I didn’t know that was the plan). The movie I suggested was playing at the UA, but it was sold out. That was a good thing. Here is the actual UA Warner Center newspaper ad for that day. See if you can guess what I thought would be a good first date.
So many great choices!
Was it:
The movie about the old guy who used to dress up like his mother and kill people?
The movie about the car thief who murders a cop then gets his innocent ex-girlfriend involved?
The fantasy space movie sequel that people were saying was the worst in the series without know how good it would look compared to the coming films?
The movie where everyone pretends the creaky old spy dude can still run around, fight squads of trained killers, and have enough energy left over to sleep with women nowhere near his age?
No, it was the movie where a guy in blue tights gets split into a weakling and a drunk by cigarette tar. Superman III, the movie that said “Superman II is just too darn serious.” Be we were lucky: It was sold out, and there was nothing else there we wanted to see (I had ditched school a few weeks earlier to see Return of the Jedi), so we went to the GCC and saw WarGames, a movie about nuclear annihilation that was actual a pretty good first date film.
Magnetic Tape
Before the magic of the Internet, people would check what was playing at a theater one of two ways: They would look in the newspaper for a listing like the one above, or they would call the theater and listen to a tape that listed everything. If you missed part of it, you stayed on the line and it would loop. One day the tape broke, and we ended up answering the phone directly. THIS FREAKED PEOPLE OUT. They wanted a bland recital of movies and times, not a conversation with a human! As soon as they realized interactivity would be involved they would hang up.
My solution: imitate the tape at first. “Hello, and thank you for calling the UA Warner Center Theater, located at 6030 Canoga Avenue, between Oxnard and Erwin Street, behind the El Torito, next to Wickes Furniture. Today in theater one we are proud to present… well, why don’t you just tell me what you’d like to see?”
It didn’t work, and now that opening is forever embedded in my brain.
More Magnetic Tape
Instead of the current style of pre-show commercials, there was a slide show of ads created mostly by local businesses. They had no music, but the theater sound systems were connected to an EIGHT TRACK TAPE PLAYER.
Like this bad boy.
They played music in an endless loop (man what is it with theaters and endless looping tapes?), and by the eighties they were not popular. Very few people owned a player, let alone a recorder.
But Brian owned a recorder.
He had an unspoken mission: Figure out the weirdest sounds he could play without someone complaining. It might be circus music. It might be Yma Sumac. It might be throat singing. I don’t think he ever found something that he had to pull. (When Ty started working at a different theater and continued the mission there, he finally cracked the code: Patrons will complain if you play the soundtrack to “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life,” which repeats whole sections of the movie, before you actually play the movie).
The downside of getting fired to go on a date
Future dates are much more difficult when you have no money.
The upside of getting fired to go on a date
Thanks to a weird and unexpected set of circumstances, losing the job at the theater led me to my first job at a school, which eventually led to me becoming a teacher. So I guess my advice is to be lucky enough to have your screwups lead to better things.
Cold is fine, especially when the sun is out. I can throw on some long sleeves, maybe a set of knee warmers or long pants, and I’ll be plenty warm once I start moving. But the wind? NO. WIND BAD. That means I’ll probably get farther behind in miles until it warms up, which means weird, short videos for a bit.
The Rose Bowl was built in 1922, twenty years after the first “Rose Bowl” game (originally called “The Tournament East-West Game”). Since 1923 only one Rose Bowl game was held somewhere else: in 1942 people were afraid it would be an easy war target, so they moved the game to Duke University in North Carolina. Duke lost the game.
This was the first time I rode around the stadium, and I learned one important thing: go clockwise. If you go clockwise you get to ride on a path around the park; counterclockwise and you end up on the regular road.
The Monkees filming Head.
Lots of movies have been filmed at the Rose Bowl, including mainstream stuff like Yes Man and Cheaper By The Dozen (the 2013 Steve Martin version), but also some odd and/or less remembered stuff, like:
…and twice KIIS-FM’s Wango Tango, which had a ton of muscial acts. My favorite list is the one from 2003 that has Bowling For Soup as the first/headline band and KISS and the last band, below such noted musical luminaries as Jennifer Love Hewitt, O-Town, and Paris Hilton. No shame in that.
So, here’s the story I almost told during the video:
Many years ago when my friend Ty got married, I was one of his groomsmen. We all wore rented tuxedos. But here’s the thing about tuxedo rental shops: they don’t carry every size tuxedo. They have a range of jackets and pants that fit most people. MOST people. The shop we went to (and probably most tuxedo shops) stocked pants with waistbands you could adjust with clips at the waist. The only pants they had hat fit my waist were huge. At the time Tom Bosley (the dad on Happy Days) was kind of a large guy, so I said I had to wear “Tom Bosley pants.”
Tom Bosley (left, making a perturbed face) wasn’t huge or anything. He just had seventies dad bod. Also pictured: The Fonz (right, making a “cool in the fifties according to people in the seventies” face) from early in the show, when he wasn’t allowed to wear his leather jacket unless he was near his motorcycle.
That was close to 40 years ago, and I believe it’s the last time I wore a tuxedo.
And that’s the whole story. Definitely worth the time you spent reading it.
Also: as the show progressed, Tom Bosley lost quite a bit of weight. I would never have fit in the final pants of Tom Bosley.
This video covers about two weeks of riding: eight or nine rides, depending what you count as a ride. I had planned to show all the rides on one map, but Strava changed their heatmaps and made that difficult. I also don’t want to stick eight or nine rides at the bottom of a post, so if you’re really curious where I rode you’ll have to look at the Strava widget in the sidebar.
